The Grace of Solitude

Saint Anthony and Saint Paul in the Desert (c. 1503) by Albrecht Dürer

THE GRACE OF SOLITUDE

“The spiritual poverty of the Western World is much greater than the physical poverty of our people. You, in the West, have millions of people who suffer such terrible loneliness and emptiness. They feel unloved and unwanted. These people are not hungry in the physical sense, but they are in another way. They know they need something more than money, yet they don't know what it is. What they are missing, really, is a living relationship with God.”

—Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Interview with Dan Wooding, 1975 

“How do I deal with my aloneness? Many people deal with it through loneliness. That means you experience your aloneness as a wound, as something that hurts you, makes you miserable. It makes you cry out, ‘Is there anyone who can help me?’ Loneliness is one of the greatest sources of suffering today. It is the disease of our time.

“…as Christians, we are called to convert our loneliness into solitude. We are called to experience our aloneness not as a wound but as a gift—as God's gift—so that in our aloneness we might discover how deeply we are loved by God.

“It is precisely where we are most alone…that God is closest to us. That is where we experience God as the divine, loving Father, who knows us better than we know ourselves.

“Solitude is the way in which we grow into the realization that where we are most alone, we are most loved by God.

“…In that place our activities become activities done for the other. If we accept our aloneness as a gift from God, and convert it into deep solitude, then out of that solitude we can reach out to other people. We can come together in community, because we don't cling to one another out of loneliness. We don't use or manipulate one another. Rather, we bow to one another's solitude. We recognize one another as people who are called by the same God.

“If I find God in my solitude, and you find God in your solitude, then the same God calls us together, and we can become friends. We can form community, we can sustain a marriage, we can be together without destroying each other by clinging to each other.”

—Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Only Necessary Thing, new ed. (2008), pages 43-44

The solitary who finds God in solitude is able to satisfy their heart and remain in communion with God. This divine companionship can make up for the absence of human companions, while in the presence of community—whether two or more persons—the solitary can love the other in and through the heart of God without suffering the need for human companionship. How is this possible? Because God can satisfy the human heart entirely, his presence can make up for the absence of human community and in the companionship of others God's presence allows the solitary to relate to others in and through God.

Human beings are social by nature, so that in beatitude everyone will be with God in the community of the other angels and saints. They will no longer feel the anguish of their inescapably solitary condition. They will be one with God first, one with the angels and saints second.